Grace is greater Ch.3.

 

 

 

Ch.3. More Redemptive Than Your Regrets
             = Redemptive Grace > Your regrets =

 As I lay there thinking and praying about my sermon, I suddenly heard a crash come from our bathroom. I hopped out of bed and ran in and saw that the full-length mirror that had been hanging on our closet door had fallen off and was in pieces on the floor. When that mirror fell, it exposed something I did that I deeply regretted. It exposed a hole in the closet door. How did the closet door end up with a hole in it? To be honest, I don’t even remember what it was about. But I got angry, lost my temper, and punched a hole in the closet door. I wish it hadn’t happened. I wish I could to back and be a patient and gentle husband. I wish I would have responded with humility and self-control. But I didn’t.

 After it happened I hoped my wife would forget about it and that my kids wouldn’t find out.  So the way I dealt with my regret was to cover up what I had done and try to forget about it. And so I went to the store and bought a long mirror and hung it on the door and pretended it never happened.

 I don’t know what caused the mirror to come off the door and crash into pieces. It had been there for over a year. I suppose the adhesive that was holding the mirror to the door wasn’t strong enough and eventually couldn’t hold it. That’s a possibility, but I suspect God was listening to me praying about a sermon that would challenge people to deal with their regrets and decided to flick the mirror off the door to remind me I had some regrets of my own that needed to be brought out of the darkness and into the light of his healing grace.
 I stood in the closet and looked at the hole in the door and then down at the broken mirror on the floor. I could see my own reflection in the broken pieces. I bent down and started picking up the broken pieces of mirror. I couldn’t help but see myself in the pieces. I wish I could go back and do it differently, but I’ll forever be a husband who got mad and put his fist through a door.

 The crash woke up my wife. She came into the closet and found me on my knees picking up the glass. I’m not much of a crier, but I  was crying and she knew it wasn’t because I was especially attached to that mirror. I’m not sure I had ever really told her I was sorry. But I was ready to repent. Through tears I told both her and God I was so sorry for what I had done. She walked over to me, and I rested my head on her stomach and cried. I felt her fingers running through my hair.  Sharing my regret and repenting for what I had done, rather than covering it up or keeping it to myself, put me in a position to receive some grace, and we finished picking up the broken pieces together.

                         Regret vs. Shame

 When we miss grace and live with guilt, that guilt usually surfaces in regret and shame. Regret and shame can, and often do, go together. They are not mutually exclusive. But there is a difference between regret and shame. Simply put, regret is feeling bad about something you have or haven’t done, while shame is feeling bad about who you are or how you think you’re perceived by God and others.

Shame is more connected to your identity, while regret tends to be about something specific you did or did not do.

 I’ve learned that many of the prisoners are carrying the heavy weight of regret. It keeps them up at night. They may know that God has forgiven them, but they are constantly reliving a specific moment when they did something they never thought they would do and are consumed by what it has cost them and the people they love. As one inmate told me, “I know I have been forgiven, but I can’t stop thinking about how different my life would be if only I could go back and make a different choice.”  That’s regret.

 I’ve noticed that when people talk to me about their regrets they typically begin the sentence with these words: If only I . . .

 I recently came across a website called “Secret Regrets” that lists tens of thousands of posts from people expressing regret for something they did.

 If there is one thing we have in common, it’s that all of us have some regrets. We all wish we could go back and do some things differently.

 Wouldn’t it be helpful if God equipped every human with a “Time Machine” function? How would you use it? Maybe you would go back to right before you took that first drink. Or right before you walked out on your family. Or right before you accepted your ex-boyfriend’s Facebook request. Or right before you agreed to go on that first date. Or right before you walked into the abortion clinic.
 You may not be locked up behind bars, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a prisoner. Most of us are desperate to be free from the guilt and regrets that imprison us.

                Regret, Remorse, and Repentance

 The Bible tells us of a night when two of the disciples did something they never thought they would do. It was the night of Jesus’ arrest. The two were Judas Iscariot and  Peter (Simon).

 Judas isn’t the only disciple who will betray Jesus on that night. Jesus  warned the other disciples, “This very night you will all fall away on account of me” (Matt.26:31). When Peter heard this, he was indignant. He passionately objected, but Jesus told him, “Truly I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times” (v.34). And then Peter doubled down on his commitment: “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you” (v.35).

 After the last supper Jesus leads them through the streets of Jerusalem. They headed out of the city through the eastern temple gate and toward the Mount of Olives. They reach an area called Gethemane. Jesus instructs them to pray and then goes off by himself. He knows the horror that awaits him, and in the quietness of the night he cries out to his Dad.

 Judas Iscariot knows where Jesus and his disciples are. He leads a group of some six hundred men into the garden to arrest Jesus. Judas has arranged a signal so that all of them would know which one was Jesus. And so he walks up to Jesus and betrays him with a kiss. The soldiers move in to arrest Jesus. The disciples are outnumbered sixty to one; they don‘t have a chance. But Peter grabs a butcher‘s knife, likely the one that had been used earlier in the evening to carve the Passover lamb, and takes a swing at the servant of the high priest. Peter tries to take off his head but manages to lop off only an ear. I‘m guessing Peter had a few holes in his closet door. Jesus immediately steps in and puts a stop to what Peter is doing. He picks the ear up, disconfects it, and reattaches it to the servant.

 Once Jesus is under arrest, all but two of the disciples flee. Peter and John follow Jesus from a safe distance. At some point the two separate, and Peter waits in the courtyard of the high priest to see what will happen to Jesus. That’s when a slave girl recognizes Peter and asks if he is one of the disciples. And Peter does what he promised he would never do – he denies Jesus. ------- (skip a few sentences) -----  Again he is recognized and again he denies even knowing Jesus.

 A little later Peter is recognized a third time, and for a third time Peter denies knowing Jesus. In fact, he even swears on the penalty of hell that he doesn’t know Jesus. But his swearing is interrupted by the crowing of a rooster. At that very moment Jesus is being led through the courtyard. His face is bloodied and swollen. Luke 22:61 tells us:

   At that moment the Lord turned and looked at Peter.  Suddenly, the Lord’s words flashed through Peter’s mind:       “Before the rooster crows tomorrow morning, you will deny three times that you even know me.” (NLT)

Peter comes to his senses. He realizes what he had done. The very thing he swore he would never do, he did.

   Peter left the courtyard, weeping bitterly. (v.62 NLT)

 As Jesus continues through a series of illegal and unjust trials, we’re told that Judas is also filled with remorse. He’s overwhelmed with regret and is desperate to make things right.
He goes to the chief priests and elders and throws the money into the temple. “I have sinned,” he confesses to them, “for I have betrayed innocent blood” (Matt. 27:4).

 Both Peter and Judas are filled with guilt and regret over what they have done. If they could go back in time and undo their mistakes they would, but they can’t. You did the one thing you promised yourself you would never do, and it can’t be undone. Maybe you didn’t do it once. Maybe you did it three times. Maybe you’ve lost track of how many times. Now it feels like a few days, or a few hours, or a few minutes, or maybe just a few seconds will define the rest of your life.

 Our regrets should lead to remorse. That’s the right response when we are confronted with our sin. God’s grace won’t leave you there, but that’s where God’s grace will most often find you. Unfortunately, when we come face-to-face with our guilt, we often do everything we can to avoid remorse.

 Here are some of the common ways I see people deal with their regrets:
   1. Rationalization. Some of the common rationalizations that I hear: “I’m not hurting anyone/ I can’t help the way I feel/         God made me this way/ God wants me to be happy.” You can always tell when someone is rationalizing because     

       you get the feeling that they are trying to convince themselves that something is OK when they know it’s not.
   2. Justification.  This usually takes the form of blaming any-thing or anyone but oneself. Many people deal 

       with regret by explaining all the ways it’s not their fault so it’s not their responsibility. “If my parents weren’t

       so permissive/ If my parents weren’t so strict/ If my wife wasn’t so critical/ If my husband wasn’t so inattentive/

       If my boss wasn’t so unfair/ If the culture wasn’t so corrupt.”
   3. Comparisons. We touched on this in chapter 1, but people try to make themselves feel better about their regrets 

       by comparing themselves to others. I think this is one of the reasons people love gossip magazines and reality

       TV. Nothing makes us feel like what we’ve done isn’t that big of a deal like hearing about what other people have

       done.
       It somehow eases our regret when we can say, “Well at least I didn’t  ______________________.”
   4. Distraction: This is a big one. We never stop long enough to look at ourselves in the mirror. We never take the

       time to reflect upon the decisions we’ve made. We fill up every inch of our lives  with work, relationships,

       and  entertainment. If we ever happen to have a few spare seconds, we instinctively whip out our cell phones and

       play games or surf the web.
   5. Escapism. this is a hard-core form of distraction. A person can’t deal with the regret they feel so they pop a few pills,
       smoke some weed, get drunk, or pull out the credit card and go on a shopping spree. We self-medicate trying

       to treat our guilt and numb the pain of what we have done, if only for a while.

 Both Peter and Judas own their mistakes. They admit where they went wrong. They allow their regrets to lead them to remorse. But they deal with their remorse differently. Judas returns the thirty pieces of silver he had taken for betraying Jesus. It’s good that he tried to make things right. As much as possible, we should take responsibility for what we’ve done. The problem is that there is very little we can do about many of the regrets we have. That tends to be one of the most significant reasons we have such a hard time living without regrets. Judas realizes he can’t undo what has been done. He can’t fix things or put the pieces back together, and the Bible tells us that he went out and hanged himself (Matt.27:5).

 Judas couldn’t deal with his regrets. He was convinced that his regrets were greater than God’s redeeming grace. He couldn’t live with the weight of what he had done, so he killed himself. Most people won’t deal with their regrets by way of suicide, but I’m convinced that many people are slowly killing themselves with regret.

 Peter, like Judas, is filled with regret, but Peter repents. Regret should lead to remorse, and remorse should lead to repentance. I don’t want to read too much into this, but in my mind it’s significant that both Peter and Judas are filled with remorse, but we read that only Peter wept. The Message paraphrases Luke 22:62 as, “He went out and cried and cried and cried.” Maybe the reason this catches my attention is because I have learned to look for tears as a sign of repentance. It’s one of the questions I ask men who come and confess a sin: “Have you cried about it?” Maybe it seems like an odd question, but in my experience tears can have incredible healing power when it comes to dealing with our regrets. John Chrysostom put it this way: “The fire of sin is intense, but it is put out by a small amount of tears, for the tear puts out a furnace of faults and cleans our wounds of sins.”

 Second Corinthians 7:10 makes a possible distinction between the way Judas and Peter dealt with their regrets: “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.”

 One early morning after Jesus had risen from the dead, Peter was out with some of the other disciples fishing. This is what he did for a living before he became a full-time follower of Jesus. Maybe he returned to the business feeling like a failure after denying the one he had left everything to follow. Maybe he had repented of his sin and been forgiven but would be forced to live the rest of his life with his regrets – thinking of what could have been and how God might have used him, if only . . .

 From the boat Peter saw a long figure walking on the shore about a hundred yards away. The man called out to the boat, “Have you caught anything?” Peter and the others responded, “No, nothing.”  The man on the shore said, “Throw your nets on the other side.” The fishermen complied and their nets were full of fish (see John 21:4-6).

 Peter realized it was Jesus, and he couldn’t wait for the boat to get back to shore. He dove into the water and swam to him. Jesus was cooking breakfast, and they gathered around a charcoal fire. Have you ever noticed how a distinctive smell can bring back a memory? I wonder if the smell of those coals triggered Peter’s mind the last time he had stood around a fire – when he had denied Jesus.

 As they stood around that fire, three times Jesus asked Peter, “Do you love me?” Three times Peter affirmed his love. Then Jesus said, “Feed my sheep” (see vv.15-17). Jesus is telling Peter that he doesn’t have to be imprisoned by his regrets. Jesus still has a great plan for Peter. Grace has the power to redeem regret.

                     A Trophy of God’s Grace

 The morning after we picked up the broken pieces of the mirror that had fallen off the closet, I told my wife that I was feeling like God wanted me to share with the church the story of me punching a hole in the door and then covering it up. I asked her if she was OK with that. I realized that the story would be embarrassing for her. She might not want thousands of people to know  that she’s married to a guy who punched a hole in her closet door. I was secretly hoping she would say no, because I was sure God would understand and let me off the hook.

But when I asked for her permission, she said, “Trust me, we’re not the only ones with a hole in our door.”

 That weekend I stood up to talk about the difference between living with regrets and repenting so that we can be set free by grace. I came clean and told the church that their preacher had lost his temper and punched a hole in the door. When the service was over I saw one of our church leaders walking over to me. I looked down as he approached. I was embarrassed and not sure what he was going to say. He gave me a hug and said, “Not one knows this, but there’s a hole behind a picture in my bedroom.” We talked for a few minutes, and by the time we were finished I looked up to see five more guys waiting to talk to me. You’ll never guess what they wanted to tell me. When my wife said we weren’t the only ones with a hole in our door, I assumed she meant that metaphorically, but after every service that weekend I had men lining up to tell me about a literal hole.

 If you come to my house today and walk into my closet, you will still find a hole in the door. I never replaced the door. I didn’t cover it back up with another mirror. I decided to leave it exposed because a strange thing happened. That hole in the door, which I wanted to hide because it reminded me of something I regretted, started to remind me of how much I am loved. A busted closet door became a trophy of God’s grace.

Grace is greater than a hole in my closet door